Elliot Dreger's Skycar

Monday, September 16, 2013

"... in March [2013] that James R. Clapper Jr., the
director of national intelligence, told a Senate committee that the
N.S.A. did not collect data on millions of Americans. Mr. Snowden’s
records forced Mr. Clapper to backtrack, admitting his statement was
false. "

So the Director of National Intelligence lied to Congress! When
this happens, isn't it usual for the liar to resign or be forced to
resign?

In 2013 NSA requested $10.45 billion
dollars from Congress, according to the top-secret budget leaked by
Edward Snowden.

And what can we expect from our tax
money? Falsehood, evasions, half-truths, three-quarter lies,
omissions...only last week the government released documents showed
that in 2010 a FISA judge told NSA that it had exceeded its authority
by spying on all phone calls in the U.S.A. Their own judge! The
agency's bland reply was that the managers of the system didn't
operate it properly. Well! Let's first fire those managers and then
their bosses - I'm sure that we can find someone to operate the
system correctly.

The city of Detroit declared bankruptcy on Friday, July
19, 2013, at 4:06 p.m. Central Daylight Time. The special referee
and the governor said that the city could not meet its obligations
and that the amount of debt, some 18 billion dollars, had become
unsustainable. Both of them tried to strike a positive note saying
that this was a new start for the city, a new sunrise, a new effort.
However, buried in the self-congratulatory speeches was the brutal
fact that the city pensions, the promises that Detroit made to its
workers, had become an unsecured debt, i.e. the pensions were
worthless or skeletal, to use a death metaphor. However, it was also
clear that some debt would get some money, that owed to bondholders
and banks. Let it be noted that these individuals and institutions
have the ability to socialize their losses through the American tax
system. Declaring their loss on their taxes means they pay less
taxes and we, the taxpayers, make up that shortfall. However, this
method of recouping losses is not available to pensioners - they
simply lose.

The ability to dump pension obligations by bankruptcy
is a fairly new phenomenon, beginning, I believe, in the 1990's. I
can think of Continental Airlines, Enron, Amerian Airlines, as
companies that evaded their pension responsibilities with this
financial device. Then cities such as Stockton, CA. and Central
Falls, R.I. declared bankruptcy. And now Detroit, once the heart of
industrial America, the home of the American automobile, the city
that wheeled the world, has reneged. Next stop: a state will
declare bankruptcy to free itself from promised pension and health
benefits.

The larger question remains unasked: Why now? The Fox
News pundits and others carefully outline the scale of benefits,
calling them insupportable - the damned Democrats and Socialists made
promises they couldn't keep - Fox News byline. However, unmentioned
is the fact that these benefits have been sustainable for at least
the last twenty-five or more years. So something must have happened.
What?

The pension funds invested in the American stock
market, which crashed in 2008, and their investments, then so safe,
have not recovered. So the cities and counties, think Orange County,
CA, couldn't maintain their level of promised benefit. So they
borrowed. The investments have not recovered their level of yield
and now the pension funds are in trouble.

Quite a feat for the bankers, yet they continue to
oppose any meaningful reform, i.e. a higher level of reserves. This
means that when they take risks, more of THEIR money would be at
risk, instead of depositors.

Thursday, July 18, 2013

A geologist at Gulf Oil, M. King
Hubbert, developed this theory in 1956: this is the point at which
petroleum extraction would reach its peak and then begin to decline.
He predicted that the United States, then the world's largest oil
producer, would reach its maximum in 1970. This happened. As a
result the seventies were a period of high volatility in oil prices.
He also predicted that the rest of the world would reach peak oil
around 2005. Since 2005 we also have had high volatility in oil
prices, cf. summer, 2010, $4.50/gal.

Recently, Op-ed pundits and others
have speculated that the United States will again become an oil
exporter, having enough for its own needs, due to fracking and
conservation (you don't hear that word much anymore, do you?).
However, if true, this only postpones the problem of oil scarcity, it
kicks the can down the road.

Perhaps today we should be thinking
about mass transit, conservation, and other sources of energy.

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

It
was Dick Cheney, graduate of the Richard M. Nixon School of Honest
and Responsible Government, who floated the idea of Total
Information Awareness back in 2001. The American people didn't like
it then, and they don't like it now. However, Dick Cheney went
underground and executed the idea. His chief-of-staff, Dick
Addington, drew up the rationale and Michael Hayden, later head of
the CIA, carried it out.

Richard
Cheney is the author of the violations of the Fourth Amendment which
now so exercise the American people.

Have
you seen him lately on the talk shows, defending his egregious
behavior? The seeds he planted have produced the police state that
he thought was necessary, even during the days of the unlamented
Richard Nixon.

Tuesday, July 9, 2013

The
right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers,
and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be
violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause,
supported by oath and affirmation, and particularly describing the
place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized.

Don't
you think this should be required reading for James Clapper, Director
of National Intelligence, and General Alexander, head of the National
Security Agency?

Eugene Robinson, in The Washington Post (7.4.13),
detailed some of the egregious violations of the Fourth Amendment.
Our government has collected information about billions of our phone
calls, and perhaps, has recorded some or all of them. He asks the
right question: under what authority was this information compiled?
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is supposed to oversee
this operation, but its proceedings and rulings are secret. So we
don't know. We do know that the government has requested more than
30,000 surveillance warrants and the court has refused only 11.
Check my math, but that's .037%.

That's right: .037%

So we don't know what information is being collected,
for what purpose, and for how long. In essence, then, this is a
lawless operation since the people, i.e. us, are not permitted to
know any of these purposes or even whether the information is being
or has been collected. It's a blank check to a Star Chamber court,
completely and irrevocably antithetical to the Constitution and the
American experience.

Policemen, and secret policemen, always want more
information in order to "protect" their society from
threats, both internal and external. In fact, the best way to
protect us would be to put us in a dark cell, completely protected

Thursday, July 4, 2013

Just what was it about President Obama
and his speech in Berlin that so bothered George F. Will,
reactionary wordsmith of the Right? Was it the President's demeanor?
Was it the mention of arms control? The President said that we
cannot ignore the intolerance and extremism that provides the fuel
for terrorism. George's sneer was that terrorists create intolerance
and extremism - basically Obama is too dumb to understand this
crucial distinction. The next insulting sneer was that Obama was
ignorant of Iran's and North Korea's nuclear programs. As if he
could be. Remember when the Right insisted that a President
shouldn't be criticised while on foreign soil? But that during the
tenure of the Toxic Texan, not the unprincipled usurper, elected
twice now. Which does remind me, has anyone heard of Mitt Romney or
Paul Ryan lately?

This president seems to get under
George's white, white skin. I looked at his article again and
decided that the old hot buttons of the Cold War, so beloved by the
Right, no longer produce the same frisson of angst and terror. The
President mentioned arms control - that means cuts in the military,
spelling financial hardship for arms makers and investors. The
President is looking at the reasons why terrorists flourish in some
venues across the globe. Again, for George, apostasy! He thinks
that Americans have a God-given right to kill terrorists and anyone ,
really, who disagrees with our unquestionably generous policies. And
then Obama talked about the North Korean and Iranian nuclear
programs. Yes, they are dangerous, but the central question is why
these two countries, certainly not very properous or advanced, should
devote so much of their Gross National Product to the production of
nuclear bombs. Might these projects have something to do with fear?
In the past has the United States threatened either or both
countries? Does anyone remember Mohammad Mossadegh or the Korean
War? Yes, George wants a no-nonsense, heavily armed America that
brooks no opposition to its sway, you know, just like Ronald Reagan.
Talking with opponents, considering long term solutions to problems,
looking unblinkingly at the mistakes we've made - not for George.

I think that these considerations
sparked George's tantrum. He was the one who hit the wall in Berlin,
not President Obama.